Photo via iStock and Jacob Wackerhausen
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Feminism has generally neglected men’s issues as a whole, which leads to the question, “But what about men?”
This line of questioning, from a male perspective, shows contempt for feminism and its lack of perceived care for men. It is my personal belief that feminism should and must aim for gender equality for all. Men should not be an afterthought in feminist thought and critique, but rather a central issue that aligns with forging true gender equality.
Women have been making grand strides in decreasing the gender gap in academia and the labor force. Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It dissects the many factors that have allowed men to fall behind women. Boys do not thrive under the current educational system, which leads them to a place of disenfranchisement and struggle once they begin their careers, and their societal role as fathers has become largely diminished.
Reeves underlines the importance of feminism and what the movement has accomplished, yet in forging gender equality, he argues that the scales of gender equality have shown a slight imbalance for men.
While reading Of Boys and Men, it is abundantly clear that women are superior at attaining academic accomplishments and surpassing goalposts that aid in career success. This is not indicative of women becoming the dominant sex, but rather a lack of resources and accommodations for boys and young men in society.
Since education has not always been accessible to women, they are now increasingly ambitious in their pursuit of education. Women hold more bachelor’s degrees, more master’s degrees, and more doctoral degrees than their male counterparts. This is both pleasing and shocking to hear. Men have been historically allotted privilege over others in this realm, yet today, women are achieving more academically.
However, this is cause for concern. In progressing women toward equality, men have been neglected. Women are closing the gender gaps, and in some cases, they’re surpassing them.
Societies equally rely on both men and women, and it is concerning that men currently appear less able to attain or advance their careers than women.
These issues are now too prevalent to ignore. Young boys are falling behind in school, which gives them a higher risk of mental health problems, substance abuse, addiction, and criminal offences.
Young boys’ needs differ from those of young girls. Girls perform well in school. In fact, they surpass boys in educational readiness at age five, and this gap only widens from kindergarten to eighth grade. In secondary education, the gender gap is even more distinct, with girls most commonly earning A’s and boys earning B’s. Moreover, girls account for two-thirds of the top 10% in schools when ranked by grade point average (GPA). This is not surprising, as girls have always held higher GPAs in high school on average. Girls also enroll in more Advanced Placement (AP) and International Baccalaureate (IB) courses than boys.
Boys tend to outperform girls on standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. However, this statistic holds little significance, with many higher-education institutions limiting the importance of the exams during the college admissions process.
Why do boys struggle more in school than girls?
The answer can best be found in psychological and neurological studies. As adolescents, there is a struggle between knowing what one should do and what one wants to do. Self-restraint is difficult as a teenager. There is a constant battle between the pleasure-seeking parts of the brain and the impulse-control parts. This is a struggle for all teens, but boys are more impacted than girls.
The cerebellum is responsible for impulse control. In Of Boys And Men, Richard Reeves notes that girls’ cerebellums mature by age 11, and boys’ cerebellums do not reach full maturation until age 15. The human brain also goes through a process called pruning, which is when the brain shrinks parts of itself to improve its function. Female brains prune at a faster rate than boys, with the largest gap appearing at age 16. The maturity gap is most prevalent between boys and girls during middle and high school. Because girls learn impulse control at an earlier age than boys, they are better equipped to perform well in school; girls do mature faster than boys.
With girls’ and boys’ brains maturing at different rates and girls being better equipped to handle secondary education, they also perform better in higher education. Women account for 59% of bachelor’s degrees, 65% of master’s degrees, and 59% of doctoral degrees. These statistics exemplify the modern-day effects of women’s advanced mental maturity.
Moreover, men have greater difficulty remaining in college in comparison to women. Only 35% of males complete a four-year degree within four years, which is significantly lower than the 46% of females who achieve this feat. Male students are also at a higher risk of dropping out than any other group.
These issues affect men in the workplace, too. Recently, NBC News reported that young men are facing greater difficulties in earning a job than ever before. Much of this struggle can be attributed to the current economic climate in the United States, but regardless, men are experiencing unemployment at higher rates than women.
The unemployment gap is largely due to the boom of female-dominated industries. According to Emerson Spick, “the labor force growth over recent months… has been coming from the health care industry, and that industry is overwhelmingly female.” Spick also notes the decline in job growth for male-dominated blue-collar industries, which is another cause of declining male employment.
How can this be fixed?
The employment and education gap is an issue of gender inequality as a result of steps taken towards gender equality. As women make gains in achieving equal footing, men seem to cower in response. Women are now achieving what only men once could. Women are opening doors to spaces that men previously dominated. Women place themselves comfortably in both female and male-dominated spaces, yet men do not seem to do the same for themselves.
Why don’t men want to enter female-dominated spaces? Is there an issue with the perceived femininity of health care and other “feminine” professions?
In truth, men probably hold a stigma against beginning their career as a nurse or a teacher because they are female-dominated jobs. When men enter a space perceived as not “meant” for them, they may incur social consequences that do not apply to women. Men have been socialized to reject femininity or any expression of it within themselves and other men, in part by the red-pill agenda, which aims to indoctrinate men into thinking there is a war on masculinity. It teaches men and boys to view women as the root of their issues, and only furthers the social stigmas against femininity and feminism.
The red-pill agenda encourages severe gender separation (which is not the goal of feminism). Education is equally important for boys and girls. Education embraces and encourages critical thinking and reasoning with nuance, which are not just necessary skills for academia but also essential to forming a well-rounded mind capable of succeeding in a complex world.
Currently, men are placed at a disadvantage in terms of equal opportunity, and that is not right. Gender equality is not merely about equality, but rather about equity and ensuring equal opportunities for achievement.
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This article was edited by Isabel Adkins and Emma Cate Martin
Lauren Gracia 
Cooper Toland 
Anita Boniface